William McNamara

William West McNamara was born March 31, 1965 in Dallas, Texas to a "professional race car driver .. and an interior designer." (Call him "Bill" or "Billy," please. Only his mother calls him "William.") He "attended" Columbia University and "studied" at the Lee Strasberg Institute. I assume those are euphemistic ways of saying he didn't finish at either one. The list of alumni on the Strasberg Institute's official page includes Rebecca Gayheart, Kevin Corrigan and Adam Sandler. It does not include Billy McNamara. (It also lists credits for some actors to help identify them but not others. It assumes you know who Kathy Griffin is but Dennis Hopper? He was in Easy Rider. Who doesn't know Catherine Hicks but Harvey Keitel? You remember, Pulp Fiction. Linda Hamilton? Sure. Angelina Jolie? Oh right, Mr. and Mrs. Smith.) 

Lots of famous actors are college dropouts. When they're asked why they left school on shows like Inside the Actors Studio the answer is often something like this: "I knew I would be an actor since I was seven or eight. My [m]om and I lived out in Los Angeles and one of her close friends was Valerie Perrine. She was like the Julia Roberts of the Seventies and we used to hang out at her house. She had all these interesting people over all the time. I hung out and watched these people and it was like hanging out at the circus or carnival. That's the kind of attraction it is." 

(Maybe the part about his mother being close friends with Valerie Perrine makes it a less than universal example. Also, nine years into her career Julia Roberts was making $10-12 million per film, not appearing as "Female Cop Pulling Over Lamborghini Babes" in the mid-'90s equivalent of Cannonball Run. She'd appear in the 21st century Cannonball Run, Ocean's Eleven, but as the female lead and again at a $10 million price. Does that make her the Farrah Fawcett? I don't mean to slight Perrine but she was only a Julia Roberts-level star to a young Bill McNamara. Could be a passing insight.) 

That's an ordinary line. "I knew it was time for me to join the circus." I like to think if James Lipton asked him that question (and don't laugh at the thought of him across the table from Lipton. Pierce Brosnan and Tim Allen have been on that show) McNamara would be more candid and say "I knew my boyish good looks would last about another ten years. Why waste time?" Let's talk about those ten years. 

Opera (1987) 

Boyish good looks he had, but he also had the frame and speaking voice of a adolescent. Dario Argento must not have noticed or cared that a shirtless McNamara wouldn't have looked out of place in a Junior High locker room. 

Wait, did I put in Larry Clark's Opera?

It was only his voice that he avoided using. Stefano the stage manager may look like William McNamara but as for what he sounds like ..

If you've ever thought to yourself "I'd kind of like to see what it'd be like if William McNamara had an English accent .. and then was stabbed to death to some Metal," you're welcome? 

Stealing Home (1988)

" .. in his 30s, doing poorly financially and socially, Billy Wyatt (Harmon) was once a very talented high school baseball player and minor-league prospect. He receives a telephone call from his mother revealing that his former child-sitter -- and later, in his teens [William McNamara], his first love -- Katie Chandler (Foster), has committed suicide." 

As YouTube's justice8424 says, these movies (where a middle-aged man reminisces about his childhood or teenage years) are supposed to be about "growing into one's self through all the pain, disappointment and failure, and becoming a whole person because of it. Making peace with the past to embrace the present." 

" .. Billy .. remembers something Katie spoke of long ago from her own early childhood: A horse in Atlantic City, being forced to run full speed down the boardwalk and off the edge into the water. Remembering that she wished (on that day) that she could fly to a faraway land to find happiness .. " 

Billy does this: 

A few observations: 

1. The '80s truly were the time of the saxophone. 

2. How much did he pay for that receptacle? Was there a Ralph's nearby? Just because he's bereaved doesn't make him a sap. 

3. If the makers of Stealing Home are allowed to anthropomorphize those birds to where it's suggested they're carrying Katie's ashes "to a faraway land to find happiness" I can instead imagine that they're thinking "God damn it, [Mark Harmon]. You fuckin' asshole." 

4. "Afterward, he rekindles old relationships and returns to a life of baseball by joining a minor league baseball team." Sounds like he's "embrac[ing] the present" to me. 

5. No, this entry hasn't had much to do with Billy McNamara. He should consider himself lucky I found that ashes scene. Otherwise I might've posted the three minute sequence that he spends half of in a power blue turtle neck. If you'd still like to see that it's here.

The Beat (1988) 

This isn't available on DVD. IMDb's plot summary is "A new kid moves into a tough neighborhood controlled by gangs, and tries to teach them poetry." I already want to see it based on that alone. That's the kind of movie they only made in the '80s-mid '90s and McNamara gets second billing, not first, so does that mean he's one of the neighborhood toughs? Here's what I can piece together: 

IMDb says I'd like it if I enjoyed The Ice Storm and Wassup Rockers. Not much to go on there. It also says that this song is on the soundtrack (in the scene that only exists in my head it's playing in the background as Robert Sean Leonard walks in and starts trying to read some Thoreau aloud).

Let's go to the IMDB user reviews:

"We recorded 'The Beat' one night when we had just let the tape run and got a great film that way by accident. Saved that tape and watched it a lot. I eventually got the VHS to add to my collection. I've watched it many times and at one point copied down the poems. I even tried to preform one scene for my high school drama class. She had said we could do any scene we wanted and just cut out the bad words. She refused to let me do it. If it could upset my drama teacher that much it has to be good :) Honest she never treated me the same after that."

Here's the only example listed of one of the film's poems: 

"do you remember the roar of the dinosaur? a woman's scotty craps on the floor bad scotty bad, oh the woman's so sad she washes her hands and then waits by the door today, yeah--today!"

If I'd been the Drama teacher I wouldn't have treated the student the same after that, either. Here's a better summary:

"Rex (played by David Jacobson) Plays an autistic kid who starts to get a long with all of these kinds, and starts to show them that poetry is really beautiful, and if applied to what these kids do in life can really make things work out for the better! Billy Kane (Played by William McNamara) and Kate Kane (played by Kara Glover) are brother and sister. Although they roll with this crowd of thugs, these kids are not the same type of people as this group. They care for Rex and they care for others, and really show an enlightened side of themselves. While his sister sleeps with the head of the Gang, she is also falling in love with Rex, trying to show him that she is not a slut. But in the end, the teachers at the school finally get to him and want to put him in a mental institution, he finally feels it is time to end his life, while Animals of Sound played without him. But they like to think that he is not dead, he is just living his life to the fullest, riding sharks and being happy living in the ocean. [Wait, they didn't throw his ashes at some birds, did they?] 

This movie, was one of those movies where I was glad that I watched it. While it was extremely entertaining, it also had a big message to it. Something a long the lines that these kids had no direction, no future, no figure heads to look up to, but because a troubled kid came along they all realized that there was way more important things to life then fighting the local black kids, or being destructive to everything. Rex showed them the beauty in angry music. Rex showed them the beauty in Rats, Disease and Murder. [I stopped here to Google "Rats, Disease and Murder," wondering if it was a hardcore band. It wasn't, so if you're thinking of starting one that name's still available.] Rex showed they the beauty in almost everything, while some of those things have no beauty involved, they still were able to see that when used in poems, these poems speak to people. Rex played an important part in this move, who changed everyones heart from depression, to see that there is hope for them, and thats why he started to show them; The Beat."

Like you, I thought that watching the trailer would only be a letdown after that. We were both wrong.

If you've ever thought to yourself, "I'd kind of like to see what it'd be like if William McNamara wore a red bandana over his head and tied a flannel shirt around his waist then talked about living 'on the street,'" you're welcome? 

Dream a Little Dream (1989) 

I like to think of this as not so much a movie as an exercise in star power. Corey Feldman said "I'm going to dress and style my hair like Michael Jackson but no one in the movie gets to joke about it. And also I get an extended dance sequence. Meredith Salenger has to act like she's really into it, not amused or alienated." Bill's demands were relatively low-key: "I want to light a cigarette in close-up. 

I want to smash a bottle on the ground. Feldman's doing MJ? I'm wearing Prince's jacket. 

And I get to hold people hostage at gunpoint in the climax." 

This was also the only time a McNamara character would ever be treated as intimidating. (He plays a serial killer in Copycat, not to get ahead, and Sigourney Weaver still calls him a "little twerp" as he has a scalpel to her.) Before he appears on screen he's referred to as "Psycho Joel" who would "walk in" there and "kill both" Feldman and Corey Haim "at the same time" if he found out that Feldman was in love with his girlfriend. I know Feldman and Haim were a little skinny then but I still think either one of them could've given as good as he got from McNamara. In part because Feldman could well be crazy. I don't know if a decision can be made on that yet. And you can't underestimate crazy in a physical confrontation.

Five years later McNamara was still appearing in major studio releases. Feldman was doing this:

Stella (1990) 

This movie stars Bette Midler. Bette Midler's most recent credit is Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. I walked past that in a store one day and in a blur of that and the DVD next to it read it as Cats & Dogs: 10th Anniversary Edition. I wondered why Cats & Dogs deserved a commemorative rerelease. That's all I have to say about Stella. 

Texasville (1990) 

I'm not on the Strasberg Institute's list of alumni either but they use "sense memory," where you recall an emotion based on an associated smell, sound, image, etc. But, you have to know why it would evoke a feeling of this or that. It wouldn't work to stand there trying things at random. "The smell of Old Spice. Nothing. What about Tiny Tim's version of 'Tiptoe Through the Tulips?' No, that makes me feel horny. I was going for angry." 

The trailer for Texasville does something for me. 

It isn't for the content. I could listen to "Queen of Hearts" by Juice Newton by itself if I wanted to (and why wouldn't I?). I don't recall liking Texasville. The trailer itself isn't anything special (and the tone seems way off for a sequel to The Last Picture Show, which is not a movie with a lot of sassy characters and farcical romantic complications). No, what I'm sure of is that it was shown in front of a movie I watched at least a dozen times on VHS as a 12 or 13-year-old. (Don't scoff. Look where that childhood behavior's got me. I'm writing about William McNamara for an actual blog. And I didn't fast-forward through the trailers after I'd already seen them. Don't question the process.) 

What I don't know is what movie it was. It wouldn't have been Pump Up the Volume. That had other New Line releases like Book of Love and Metropolitan on it. It must've been something I liked enough to look forward to seeing again because you watch that trailer and think "What's the big deal? This is pretty average" while I get a feeling of positive reassurance or excited anticipation. 

This is one way among very few in which the Internet's let me down. There should be an online resource for matching up trailers to home video releases so that this kind of question can be answered without going through old tapes and obtaining a functioning VCR. That's too much work and I can't help but feel that if it was something I'd be comfortable recalling I'd do so. Maybe it's a title that would be embarrassing to remember having watched often at that age. And so far on this site I've done a massive scene-by-scene breakdown of Private School, complained that there wasn't a sequel to The Last Boy Scout and admitted that Pump Up the Volume (full review coming soon) is something I've watched and enjoyed multiple times so start imagining what I'd have forced myself to block out rather than share with you. 

Oh, he played Jeff Bridges' son in this.

Aspen Extreme (1993) 

I'm having trouble with the details on this so I'm going to turn it over to my co-blogger, Hector R. Hecht. 

"I must confess that I actually really like this film.  I was a huge skiing fanatic as a teenager, and I probably saw this film 20-30 times despite William McNamara's appearance as Todd Pounds.  After his lifelong best friend Dexter Rutecki is killed in an avalanche while training for the Powder 8 (participants ski in teams of two, and the winner is the team that can make the most perfect figure eight-shaped tracks), T.J. Burke is approached by Pounds, who's looking for a partner for the competition.  Burke isn't won over by Pounds's enthusiastic assertion that 'People will say we're the best anywhere!' and he declines Todd's offer.  Later he reconsiders and decides that he'll ski with Todd after all, even if he is played by William McNamara.  Do they win the Powder 8 and turn Aspen Extreme into the feel-good movie of 1993?  Watch it and see!"

There, a recommendation for one of these. Thank you, Hector. So, right, McNamara's the Merlin to T.J. Burke's Maverick. People may not often recall this but Merlin was the second "replacement Goose" in Top Gun. The first was Sundown. Not only was Sundown level-headed, confident, encouraging ("You got the angle. Piece of cake, pal") and by all appearances a more than capable Navigator, he wasn't going to put up with any of Pete Mitchell's flakiness. "What do you mean it doesn't 'look good?' It doesn't get to look any better than that." "HEY! We coulda had him, man." There was only one problem. 

To summarize: Aspen Extreme is the Top Gun of the slopes (if Maverick wasn't an obvious racist and Goose had a cocaine problem)! They have my permission to put that blurb on the cover of the Blu-Ray as long as they use it in its entirety. 

Extreme Justice (1993) 

IMDb lists him as "Mark Franklin (surfer, uncredited in film credits)." I have no way of verifying that other than watching it. Remember when Ordell sees this 

in Jackie Brown and asks "Is that Rutger Hauer?" It's possible there's an Ordell out there who would watch Extreme Justice and think "Is that William McNamara? I need to update his IMDb page." But, I'm going to treat it as official if only so I have an excuse to share the poster. 

Chasers (1994) 

The movie made because some people thought "Last Detail's O.K., I guess, but you know how it could've been better? If there was a buddy cop movie-style age disparity between Jack Nicholson and Otis Young and there was sexual tension between Nicholson and Randy Quaid." 

Dennis "Scooby Doo" Hopper's last directorial effort if you don't count the 2000 short Homeless, the IMDb plot summary for which I provide from start to finish: "A homeless woman, improbably well-groomed and (as seen naked to the waist as she changes from one shabby sweater to another) well-toned, spends from dawn till night pushing her cart around a seaside California city. Flashbacks show that she was once an exotic dancer and illustrate the point that, under the over-sized and dirty clothing that makes her 'invisible,' she is still the same attractive woman." I can't tell you why it was made so I'm going to believe it was presented as a possible piece of advocacy on behalf of the National Coalition for the Homeless, whose board watched it and said "Thanks, Dennis, but we're not sure if we want our message to be 'You never know, that 'invisible' street person may be well-toned and willing to dance naked for money."

Chasers would've been more interesting if it was all about Crispin Glover playing mind games with William McNamara. 

It wasn't, so don't watch it. But, I don't want to waste your time with this entry so I'll offer a tip based on my research. If you want to put nude scenes on YouTube, make sure that the title is in Cyrillic and a bit obscure ("end justifies the means") when translated and you have to search for "chasers mcnamara" to find the video. Because the only people searching for "chasers mcnamara" on YouTube are krambett, leikers (who responds to a video with a Cyrillic title and scene description with a demand to "Put all the complete video" .. typed in Spanish) and me. (Also, people might search for "Erika Eleniak." So, in the tags spell her name as "Erica Elleniac.") A commentary on William McNamara's career? You can read it as one. 

Surviving the Game (1994) 

We have a full review planned for this one. Maybe you'll like it and the one for Pump Up the Volume enough that you'll think of this post as a trailer in front of those and in twenty years wonder why it is that reading William McNamara's obituary makes you feel good. But, no promises. Here I'll only nominate Billy McNamara as Derek Wolfe, Jr. / F. Murray Abraham as Derek Wolfe, Sr. as the most ridiculous father-son actor pairing in film history. 

Would Derek Wolfe, Sr. think Ice-T was a "piece of shit" if he knew about his past as an exotic dancer? 

Radio Inside (1994) 

There's a scene where McNamara's character and his brother (Dylan Walsh) are in a car together. "Radar Love" comes on and they talk about what a great driving song it is. I'll go along with a lot in a movie. I'll suspend disbelief. I'll empathize. I'm a patient and reasonable viewer. "Radar Love" is not a great song of any kind. "Radar Love" is "nothing." "Less than nothing." 

"Michael [Dylan Walsh] is dating a girl, Natalie [Elisabeth Shue], and is considering asking her hand in marriage. However, he is often insensitive to her emotional needs, a fact which his younger brother recognizes and tries to help with. Matthew [William McNamara] then becomes emotionally attached to Natalie, but finally realizes that in order to keep his brother, he must give Natalie up, much as he gave up his father. The heaviness of this realization drives him to a suicide attempt. He concludes that God wants people to give everything to God, at least everything they value dearly." 

Again, I want to follow the film's logic but I don't understand. Does he think Dylan Walsh is God or that God wants Elisabeth Shue as a girlfriend?

Copycat (1995) 

No, thanks. Hector? 

"Well, I don't want to spoil anything for you [too late], but if you still give the slightest fuck who the copycat murderer is by the time it's revealed to be William McNamara, having this suspense yawn (and that is not a typographical error) ruined for you is probably the very least of your problems.  I realize that Sigourney Weaver's character in this film is afraid of damn near everything, but come on: 

If I woke up to find this guy standing over my bed with a bloody knife in one hand and a severed head in the other I'd turn over and go back to sleep.  When you have two serial killers in a movie and the more convincing one is played by Harry Connick, Jr. it's time to run your casting director out of town.  Serial killers are interesting in real life.  Movies about serial killers are usually pretty bad, and this might be the worst one ever made." 

Thank you. "Noted film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times awarded it three-and-a-half stars out of a possible four .." Noted film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times was wrong to do so. Let me be a very specific Netflix and say that if you're interested in both mid-'90s Sigourney Weaver and what Hannah Arendt called "the banality of evil" try Death and the Maiden instead. It has its own problems but you'll get more out of it.

Girl in the Cadillac (1995) 

Maybe it started during the famous "Цель оправдывает средства" scene, where McNamara and Eleniak exchange the following dialogue in character: 

"I was ready to explode when you were on my lap." 

"Oh, is this the sweet-talking stage?" 

"You kill me." 

"You're turning me on." 

but the two were briefly engaged. Seeing their chance to become the Tracy and Hepburn of Generation X, they, uh, chased Chaser .. no, I'm not doing that. They followed up Chasers with this: 

Should I blame the filmmakers or the people who made that trailer for the fact that I still don't want to see it knowing it's a movie where Bill McNamara and Erika Eleniak are on the run from Michael Lerner and Bud Cort after a bank heist gone wrong? Both? 

Eleniak married Roch Daigle instead. 

"His name is [Roch Daigle]." 

"His partner's name is Chest Rockwell." 

"Those are great names!" 

Not much left worth mentioning besides 

Ringmaster (1998) 

in which he played Jerry Springer's assistant and 

Sweet Jane (1998) 

A "drama about an unlikely friendship that develops between an HIV positive prostitute (Samantha Mathis) addicted to heroin and a terminally-ill fifteen-year-old boy (Joseph Gordon-Levitt)." McNamara plays "Stan Bleeker." I want to try to guess what kind of character Stan Bleeker is before I read the rest. Is he Mathis' sleazy pimp? A low-class customer? Someone Gordon-Levitt sticks up for Mathis to? If I didn't know the character's name I might also guess a flamboyant HIV positive drag queen that helps Mathis and Gordon-Levitt keep perspective with off-color wisecracks ("You don't have to fret none about bein' thin as a noodle, honey. I like my boys that way. Just not in the drawers.") and the music of Sister Sledge. But that character would be named "Madam Firecracker." 

No luck finding out about Stan Bleeker in the extended plot summary, but (and look away if you think the movie ends with McNamara finding a cure for AIDS) "Jane uses money she has stolen from a store to make Tony comfortable in his last days, buying him clothes and putting him in a fancy hotel, and in a touching scene she takes his virginity so that he can experience making love to a woman before he dies." Our second Superlative of this filmography. We've already had the Most Ridiculous Father-Son Actor Pairing. Now we have my nominee for Most Depressing Mercy Fuck in Film History. 

"Tony's condition drastically worsens the next day, and Jane brings him on a rowboat to the middle of a beautiful lake and, to alleviate his pain in his final moments, gives him a fatal dose of heroin, euthanizing Tony but allowing him to die in his new 'mother's' arms." Let's do the same for McNamara's run as the Julia Roberts of the Nineties.

Bonus Material (for the McNamara Completist): 

I didn't talk about his TV work, but the material's out there if you're interested in 2006's Nightmares and Dreamscapes, where "A couple (Kim Delaney, Steven Weber) gets lost in a strange place called 'Rock and Roll Heaven' which is populated by the ghosts of dead rock and roll legends." (McNamara plays Ricky Nelson. "Stephen King: When you think of death, think of '50's rock and roll.") Or if you're a Doing Time on Maple Drive fan, there's a tribute video set to Depeche Mode available. 

I couldn't make up a better coda for this than the following exchange, which appears below it:

I forgot about this movie. what ever happened to william mcnamara?

wikkedcity 3 years ago 

Yeah, good question. He was pretty cute wasn't he? I always get him confused James Marsden, who played Cyclops in the X-men movies. Another cutie…

veronagentleman 3 years ago

And if you've ever thought to yourself, "I'd kind of like to know why Martha Plimpton isn't invited on talk shows (other than because she hasn't been in a major studio release in the last fifteen years)" 

or "How awkward would William McNamara look if he made a failed pass at someone on television? Which actor from The Andy Griffith Show does he 'put a little piece of' in each of his performances? Was he a Gore supporter?" 

you're welcome?